Just after the markets closed on its first day of public trading, Facebook amended its S-1 with a complete prospectus detailing how much stock each underwriter got to sell. Morgan Stanley, the lead-left bank, received 162.1 million shares (.15 billion worth) followed by J.P. Morgan with 84.8 million (.22 billion), and Goldman Sachs pulled down 63.1 million shares (.4 billion).

E*Trade and Itaú got the short end of the stick, receiving just million in stock. That’s less than any of the other underwriters despite being listed in the middle of the pack in the previous versions of the prospectus. But none of the banks made too much on the Facebook stock. FB shares closed just .23 above its IPO price this morning. That means Facebook maximized the amount it raised in the offering, but its underwriters didn’t receive the massive cash windfall many expected.

Facebook’s IPO was obviously the single most discussed topic on Twitter today. The good folks over at social media data platform DataSift monitored what Twitter users were saying about the IPO throughout the day and came up with some interesting conclusions. Turns out, the ups and downs of how Twitter’s users felt about the stock pretty much mirrored the price of Facebook’s stock as the day progressed.

Basically, DataSift notes, every time the volume of negative chatter on Twitter increased, Facebook’s stock price dropped within 20 minutes. “So if people had traded based on signals today to buy/sell Facebook stock,” the company told us,”they might have done quite well.”

To create this graph, DataSift recorded 95,019 interactions from 58,665 authors over a period of 6 hours. Most interactions, of course, took place right during the early hours after Facebook’s stock started trading (and took an immediate dive from closer to ). The company also saw a second and much smaller uptick in interactions toward the end of the day as well.

For the most part, of course, this is just a fun exercise in tracking Twitter data. It’s worth noting, though, that quite a few recent studies that looked into the connection between Twitter posts and stock prices found that there is at least a slight correlation between Twitter sentiment and volume and stock prices.

You can find a bit more of DataSift’s data, which also takes a closer look at the total volume of posts about the Facebook IPO, here.

Charles Schumer and Bob Casey, the two U.S. Senators behind the Ex-PATRIOT act — a proposal to go after early Facebook backer Eduardo Saverin and others like him that have renounced U.S. citizenship and are getting out of paying capital gains tax on stock windfalls — have now revealed the details of their plan. We first wrote about it earlier today when the offices of the two senators first announced their intentions.

It’s pretty big: any ex-pat with either a net worth of over million, or an average income tax liability of at least 8,000 over the last five years, “will be presumed to have renounced their citizenship for tax avoidance purposes.” The ex-pat will have to demonstrate to the IRS that this is not the case if it is not. If there is a “legitimate reason” for that person living outside the U.S. no penalties will apply. But if the IRS finds that someone gave up their passport for tax purposes, they will impose a tax on that individual’s investment gains “no matter where he or she resides.”

The rate of that capital gains tax will be 30 percent — the same that non-resident aliens currently pay on dividends and interest earnings.

The tax detailed this act, if approved, will backdate for 10 years after its approval.

Saverin is expected to make at least .84 billion when Facebook goes public tomorrow and would have picked up a tax bill of million on it. He has lived in Singapore since 2009, where there is no capital gains tax. In September 2011 he renounced his U.S. citizenship.

“Mr. Saverin has decided to ‘defriend’ the United States of America just to avoid paying his taxes. We aren’t going to let him get away with it so easily,” Schumer said in a statement. “It’s infuriating to see someone sell out the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him and helped him become a billionaire. This is a great American success story gone horribly wrong. We plan to put a stop to this tax avoidance scheme. There should be no financial gain from renouncing your country.”

As long as an individual does not pay his or her taxes under the scheme, he/she will be barred from entering the U.S., forever. Currently people can still come to America, even after renouncing their citizenship. Legislators have been trying to pass a similar measure for years now, although the last act to try to do this — the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 — apparently was written with some loopholes that made it unenforceable. So much for DC power. Makes you wonder if this time they will manage to be more effective.

The senators note that in 2011, 1,780 people gave up their passports — a record number. And there is a sign that this trend is growing: in 2008 only 235 people gave up their passports.

Currently, if people have been found to have given up their passports for tax reasons, they can still come back to the U.S. for up to 60 days every year, and thousands do.

It’s ironic, and probably not a coincidence, that the rise in tax avoidance of this kind is happening just as the U.S. banking system is going through its own wringer and the public tide is turning against the concept of fat cats benefitting from over-bloated markets when average people are finding it hard to make ends meet. Schumer and Casey at least in part seem to be playing to that crowd in this move.

Full summary of the act below:

Summary of the “Ex-PATRIOT” Act

“Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy” Act

 Sponsored by Senators Charles E. Schumer & Bob Casey

I.                   Current law (Section 877A of the Internal Revenue Code) already provides that any individual who either has:

(a) A net worth of million or more; OR

(b) An average income tax liability of at least 8,000 over the last five years;

and who renounces their citizenship has to pay an exit tax based on the value all property and assets owned by that individual.

The Ex-PATRIOT Act provides that when an individual expatriates for a substantial tax purpose—as judged by the Internal Revenue Service—that individual will be subject to a 30% capital gains tax on future investment gains. Section 871 of the Internal Revenue Code already taxes non-resident aliens for dividends, interest and other items at the 30% rate.  The Ex-PATRIOT Act adds capital gains to this mix of taxable earnings. The tax will apply to anyone who gave up his citizenship in the last ten years but only taxes capital gains earned in the USA following the date of enactment.

II.                The Ex-PATRIOT Act also provides that if the IRS finds that avoidance of taxes was a substantial purpose of expatriation, the individual who renounced citizenship will be barred from any type of re-entry into the United States.  This section requires the IRS commissioner to make a decision regarding tax-avoidance intent for every individual subject to Section 877A who renounces citizenship.  It is retroactive and will encompass individuals who have renounced citizenship for the 10-year period prior to enactment of the statute.

Facebook introduced app ratings and negative feedback metrics to the app insights tool today as a way to help developers gain a better understanding of how users respond to their apps.

Detailed on developer blog post, these new metrics allow developers to go beyond monitoring growth trends and gain. Facebook has used this data to determine what appears in News Feed, but developers previously did not have the ability to see these insights or track their performance over time. Facebook says app ratings and negative feedback will also factor into what apps appear in the recently announced App Center.

The new app ratings dashboard in app insights will show developers how users have rated an app on a scale of one to five stars. Developers can view ratings as absolute numbers or relative percentages across different demographics, including age and gender, country and locale. Before, developers could only see their apps’ average overall rating and could not determine how the rating varied over time or by demographic.

The negative feedback metric will show developers how many times people have chosen to hide stories from an app, reported stories as spam or blocked an app completely. These reports are the same ones Facebook uses in its automated systems to detect spam on the platform, so it will be useful for developers in monitoring their performance over time. The insights will include the ratio of negative feedback to total impressions as well as an overview chart that displays green when an app is doing well and yellow when an app has reached a level for concern. Developers will even be able to compare the type of feedback they get from specific action types, as well as compare how users versus non-users respond to their content.

He’s not taking off the hoodie, and he’s not going to NYC. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Facebook will IPO on Friday with CEO Mark Zuckerberg ringing the NASDAQ bell remotely from his company’s new Menlo Park headquarters. This follows the trend of companies like Zynga who also rung the IPO bell from home base rather than New York. CNBC tweeted the news this morning and we’ve verified this with another source close to the IPO proceedings.

Some investors worry about Facebook’s ability to earn revenue on mobile as more users migrate away from its classic web interface. But now Bloomberg reports that Facebook will cease taking orders for shares tomorrow and that the IPO will be massively oversubscribed, despite citing underwhelming demand from investors a few days ago. Wall Street pros aside, national fervor over the popular social network’s entrance into the public market has amateur investors pleading with their brokers to get them stock.

News Alert: Facebook to ring opening bell remotely from Menlo Park HQ – Zuckerberg will stay at Menlo Park headquarters $FB—
  (@CNBC) May 14, 2012

Some believed that a late start to the pre-IPO roadshow, adverse market conditions, and a potential FTC probe into Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram could delay the IPO. But it now looks like things are right on schedule. Facebook filed documents this morning to show it would be listed on the NASDAQ with the symbol ‘FB’.

Pricing will likely be confirmed on Thursday, though a recent amendment to its S-1 indicated a price range of to , giving it a value of billion to billion. That’s a bit shy of the rosy 0 billion reporters, and presumably early share holders, were hoping for.

[Update: However, now CNBC reports and we have independently confirmed with a reliable source that Facebook will increase the price range to to , giving it a valuation of billion to 3 billion. The price increase is likely to take advantage of strong demand for the stock. Another amendment to Facebook S-1 document to be filed in the next few days will officially confirm the price increase.]

If you don’t have the budget to make a serious investment you could always buy a single share and get a commemorative stock certificate.

One thing to remember: there isn’t a physical “NASDAQ bell”. It’s just a term borrowed from older stock exchanges like the NYSE that actually used a metal bell to alert those on the floor that trading had begun. Zuckerberg will press a buzzer and sign a screen to symbolically open NASDAQ trading for the day. The ceremony will be broadcast over satellite and on nasdaq.com.

The IPO will come as a huge reward for Facebook’s employees, especially early ones who’ve put their blood, sweat, and tears into growing the company, but haven’t had the liquidity to improve their lifestyles. Zuckerberg himself was known to dwell in a very modest apartment a short walk from Facebook’s old headquarters on California Avenue in Palo Alto until he recently upgraded. Many expect housing prices to shoot up in the area surrounding Facebook’s Menlo Park campus as well as nearby San Francisco, or are already seeing it happen.

Zuckerberg is expected to give a speech or at least some opening remarks from the bell ringing ceremony at his 1 Hacker Way HQ. However, the event will likely be for employees only, so if you want hear him speak in person, you better put in a job application or try to get acquired quick.

[Image Credits: WatBlog, WKOW,  Slice of MIT, Herb Lingl - Aerial Archives]

Today Facebook begins rolling out file sharing to all Groups, and while it’s got many restrictions, it could be good enough to limit the long-term growth potential of cloud storage / file sharing services like Dropbox, iCloud, and Google Drive. Music and any copyright files aren’t allowed and file size is capped at 25mb, as Mashable first reported. But this is just the first version, and you can be sure Facebook will keep hacking away at it.

Last month, the social network started letting users share files within Groups for Schools, but now we confirmed with Facebook that within a few days all Facebook users should have the option to upload and share files from the Groups post composer.

Facebook users often talk about downloadable files, but now they’ll be able to share those Word docs, images, e-books, PDFs rather than having to upload them elsewhere. The addition of file sharing has been a long time coming, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously worked on a peer-to-peer service called WireHog, which was shut down due to concerns about copyright infringement. It also comes after Facebook’s acquisition of New York City-based file sharing Drop.io in 2010, which brought Sam Lessin on board.

File sharing could help Facebook fight its public image as a distraction from getting real work done. If you already have a Facebook Group to organize discussion about a class, work project, or vacation with friends, file sharing will fit right in.

You’re not going to be able to share huge home movies or zip files of photos, and sadly amateur musicians won’t be able to share their own creations with friends. But Facebook file sharing could be good enough for a lot of people, especially if it ups the file size limit, creates perma-URLs for files, and creates a tab in groups specifically showing shared files. Most important it would need extend file sharing to the general news feed to really become competitive. If it makes these improvements though, it could pull market share from other file sharing system by focusing on convenience.

There’s still plenty of use cases for the big cloud storage / file sharing services…such as sharing copyrighted files. Plus people might feel like their files will be more private on a dedicated service, even though Facebook Groups are quite secure. Products specifically for file sharing might always rule for business, but free personal usage that Facebook could chip away at has been a huge lead generator for enterprise sales. That’s why Facebook moving into the space could limit their long-term growth potential — something investors who sunk 7 million into Dropbox don’t want to see.

Let me be clear: this won’t kill Dropbox or reverse its stellar growth. We’re fans of the service and it won the TechCrunch Crunchie for overall startup of the year. But Facebook could make it hard for it become so popular that it could deliver to investors a serious multiple on the huge amount of funding its received.

The “good enough” approach is becoming a Facebook staple. It’s asymetrical, interest graph follow feature Subscribe was late to the game by years, but because it lives in the news feed where 900 million people already spend their time, it could stunt Twitter’s growth. The same thing could happen here. Facebook’s popularity and how deeply it’s ingrained our lives give it a big advantage. Power users may always crave specialized products, but for average joe, the option to send a file from the Facebook account they already have might be enough to stop them signing up somewhere else.

[Additional reporting by Ryan Lawler. Image Credit: How Stuff Works]

Some slightly conflicting stories zipping across the ether today involving Facebook, its billion acquisition of Instagram and a rumored Federal Trade Commission investigation into the deal: The FT is reporting that this could delay the acquisition. Betabeat is reporting that this could actually delay Facebook’s IPO.

Could it be both? Either? Neither? We reached out to the FTC to get some info straight from the horse’s mouth.

For starters, it should be pointed out that the FTC can’t say one way or the other whether it is investigating the Facebook/Instagram deal. “The commission does not comment on investigations,” Mitch Katz, a public affairs spokesperson, told us. “You would need to check directly with the company.”

However, he did also note that as a matter of course, the FTC investigates all deals with a value greater than .2 million. That puts this billion deal firmly into the investigating pile, then.

What next? Once the FTC — or, for that matter, the Department of Justice — does initiate an investigation, it can last for up to 30 days and the merger cannot go ahead until that investigation is terminated. (By the way, although the FTC can’t say when it is investigating someone, it can publicly disclose when it has terminated that investigation. Go figure.)

If, when the preliminary investigation period of 30 days is up and the FTC has not yet come to a decision, it can ask for a second request. This doesn’t necessarily mean something suspicious is going on, Katz told me.

“A lot of people think, if we issue a second request, that means we have problems with a deal. But that’s not true,” he said. “It may be that we just need more information to determine whether there are any competitive concerns. Issuing a second request is not an indicator there is a problem; just that we need more information.”

That information can be about the markets — here, social networks and photo sharing, and mobile — what the companies do, what their operations are, and whether they are competitors in certain markets and how their merger could impact competition.

The investigation can involve other companies also providing feedback — and indeed the FT notes that “at least two” major competitors are providing information to the FTC for this (Twitter and Google perhaps?).

One thing that seems pretty clear is that the FTC’s investigation is squarely about the Facebook and Instagram merger — not Facebook’s IPO, which coincidentally Facebook is preparing for and is scheduled to take place on May 18.

Facebook could always delay the IPO, but that would be its decision — not something related to the FTC.

“Any potential investigation would be done independently [of the IPO plans],” Katz said. “The decision whether [the investigation] would have any impact on the IPO would be up to the company.” Given that Facebook didn’t expect the Instagram deal to close before the end of the second quarter anyway — that is, the end of June — it might not see the FTC nosing around as reason enough to delay its listing plans.

We have also contacted Facebook and will update this post with any further information that we get from them.

Facebook’s role as a social network for close to one billion people can be a weighty responsibility, and today the company took one more step in the kind of social outreach activities that befit a company with that kind of audience. It has formed a new partnership with Blue Star Families and the Department of Veterans Affairs to create a special set of services aimed at vets and other military personnel, to help prevent suicide.

Engineers at Facebook have developed a special solution, the company says, that will be able to identify military families and military personnel on the social network. What it will mean is that when friends and families of those military people report harmful or suicidal content, posters of that content will receive information specifically related to crisis services for U.S. military people.

These will include links to services such as the Veterans Crisis Line, where people can communicate with people by phone, online chat or text messaging to talk through their issues and get further help. This will further enhance existing services that Facebook offered for suicide prevention outreach, which let people report/flag potentially suicidal content posted by a Facebook contact. That reporting triggers an email to the poster with support information from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Creating services targeting military personnel are significant on two levels for Facebook. For one thing, the social network has very high usage among military families — some 86 percent of military families that are on Facebook say they use it daily. For another, there is almost as high an incidence of suicide contemplation among families of military people are there are among military people themselves: respectively, 10 percent and nine percent of them have considered suicide, according to a new survey from Blue Star. Altogether there are some 2.2. million military families in the U.S.

As Facebook continues to gear up for its IPO, the company has been making other moves to enhance its social responsibility profile. These have included an initiative to encourage organ donation by letting users identify themselves as organ donors.

The company will host a Facebook Live event tomorrow at 3PM EST with Blue Star Families, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Wounded Warrior Project to talk more about this new development and the wider issue, as part of Military Appreciation Month, it says.

[photo: WisGuard Pics, Flickr]

Editor’s note: Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm, and the author of “The End of Business As Usual.” You can follow him on Twitter @briansolis.

You Like me…you really Like me. Wait. Maybe you don’t really Like me after all. According to our Facebook engagement metrics, only 1% of you actually react when we post. So, to keep the numbers up, our team posts more often, asks questions, runs polls, curates content, introduces more and more contests, and asks for your help to submit your pics and videos as part of our “user-generated” content campaigns. We measure success by the Likes, comments, shares, the number of conversations, and reach. While the Likes are rising, we’re starting to recognize the pattern…I guess we never really defined why you should “Like” us beyond the initial click. We just took for granted that a Like equated to an opt-in.

This general scenario is more common than you may think. That’s all about to change however. Marketers must now rethink their Facebook strategy to define click paths and results. As Josh Constine recently reported, Facebook is now giving advertisers access to its API to improve post-click actions. In his post, Constine walks through a series of various scenarios for brands, developers and also local businesses to take advantage of the new Ads API. Here, we’ll talk more about how to start with strategy.

With the updated Ads API, advertisers must now think beyond the “Like.” Facebook’s Ads API will allow advertisers to present ads most likely to take specific post-click action such as content sharing, in-app purchases, Facebook Offers, among a list of other actions (see below). In the great pursuit of ROI, Facebook is also taking a lot of the guesswork out of ad campaign development and deployment to enhance desired performance. The new improvements give Facebook advertisers an unprecedented opportunity to connect with specific market segments based on intelligence to introduce more informed campaigns that trigger relevant clicks, conversions, and return.

What does “more informed” actually mean? Facebook is studying the behavior of its consumer population and as it does, it will provide deeper insights to brands seeking specific actions, such as those who are more likely to be a virtual good buyer, someone who actively shares content, who attends events, individuals who appreciate deals and offers. Over time, ads can be optimized for audiences based on this behavior as well. As such, brands must not only compete for attention and clicks, but also context and relevance based on behavior and preferences.

For brands and agencies, advertising based on keywords is no longer good enough. Now that you have a better shot at reaching the right people based on behavior, advertisers must now also become architects of experiences and outcomes.

Now advertisers can specifically optimize for…

1. People talking about this page
2. Page likes
3. Page post likes
4. Page post comments
5. Page post shares
6. @ mentions
7. Check-ins
8. Photo tags
9. Offers shared
10. Offers claimed
11. App installs
12. App used
13. Credit spend events (number of times someone uses credits in the app)
14. Credit spend amount (value of credits that were spent in the app)
15. Number of RSVPs

This is a click to action…

Designing campaigns now require brands and advertisers to think about the “click to action” they want to encourage. I refer to this as the A.R.T. of Engagement, where brands intentionally design campaigns to provoke relevant actions, reactions, and transactions. To take advantage of Facebook’s API, brands must now employ sophisticated advertising approaches that combine segment and contextual research, segment-specific strategies, app and channel development for each approach, UX, creative design, and real-time conversion metrics, review and optimization.

It’s more than Likes or forcing people through Like-gated apps or campaigns. Now it’s about performance and conversion science where…

1) Contextually relevant content appears in front of qualified and desirable audiences that…

2) Triggers a defined, useful action that…

3) Leads to optimized click paths that result in material content or activity, which then…

4) Motivates conversions to preferred outcomes and…

5) Delivers a more integrated, consistent, and efficient experience.

To engage more effectively through Facebook’s social advertising platform requires that all strategies and campaigns commence with a stated purpose. I believe that the best way to outline these scenarios is to begin with the end in mind and work backwards from there. By starting with the end in mind, the ability to research desired behavior and who to reach as a result becomes incredibly clear…and also inspiring.

The dimensions of engagement you’ll need to define are 1) what are you trying to accomplish, 2) what the experience looks/feels like, 3) what benefits you’ll offer and what they mean to the people you’re trying to reach, 4) the desirable outcomes you wish to measure, 5) How people feel as a result of the A.R.T. experiences you evoke, and 6) What the experience will look like in the most prominent channels of your connected customers.

This is why you’re now an architect of experiences and outcomes. It takes vision. It takes design. It takes measurement and optimization. The A.R.T. of Engagement is realized through a Social Experience Framework that starts with intentions and ends with resulting sentiment…not just the outcome.

There’s an old saying, “it’s not the gift that counts, it’s the thought behind it.” The same is true for social advertising, marketing and well, business overall. Intentions count for everything. Therefore your intentions must be realized as experiences where technology serves as the enabler to creatively and contextually engage to create experiences that meet or exceed expectations and ultimately inspire desirable outcomes.